Tamil People, Where Did We Go Wrong?
MA Sumanthiran MP
We convene today as the world mourns the death of that outstanding human being Nelson Mandela. He passed away two days ago, aged 95. I wish to place on record our deepest condolences to his family, to the people and the Government of the Republic of South Africa. Mandela was not just a son of Africa, but of the whole world and we too suffer the loss. While we mourn the loss of his life, we celebrate it with thankfulness to God for giving us Mandela as an example of one who fought for the rights of his own people, even taking up arms at one point in his life, but without ill-will against the enemy, and most of all, one who did not wreak revenge but corrected the wrongs and showed magnanimity in victory. It was that ushering in of true democracy, justice, magnanimity and the spirit of forgiveness that helped unite a fractured country.
I stand up to speak today on the External Affairs Ministry’s votes when this country’s foreign relations are at an all-time low. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that there has never been a time that was worse than this in terms of our image abroad, in our post-independence history. We discuss this vote hot on the heels of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held in Colombo, and the appointment of His Excellency Mahinda Rajapaksa to the Chair of CHOGM for the next two years – not as head of the Commonwealth, as some seem to believe. The Queen will continue to head the Commonwealth. This event has been a bitter pill for us. It started with the Queen announcing that she will not attend the event in Colombo. There were several previous attempts to change the venue on the basis that Sri Lanka was not an appropriate venue, given its human rights record. Sri Lanka, though, fought all of this and succeeded in hosting the event, and thought its success lay in only warding off these challenges. And now that the event has been held we seem to think that is victory for our foreign policy! And this happened even as we have had two resolutions already passed in the UNHRC and are staring at another possible resolution in less than 6 months away.
Hon Minister, I would like to invite your attention to a cost-benefit analysis of hosting CHOGM in Sri Lanka: was it really a success? Apart from the Queen herself, several other Heads of Government did not turn up, some explicitly citing Sri Lanka’s appalling record of human rights. Heads of Government of Canada, the largest country within the Commonwealth and India, the most populous country, stayed away. In all only 23 Heads of Government, less than half the number, attended the event. Mauritius even sacrificed their turn to host the next meeting for the sake of principles. Many of those who attended came with apologies saying that they were coming precisely for the purpose of raising the human rights concerns. This hardly can be said to be an endorsement of our record. Read More
